MTN Ghana Foundation donates infant incubator for Savelugu Hospital

The continuous increase in human population coupled with growing heath care needs of the people in Ghana has given cause to stakeholders to worry hence the need for the provision of adequate infrastructure to support the increasing population.

It is however evidential that the existing government health facilities are over burdened with the task of delivering quality health service with relatively limited resources. 

Government alone cannot resource these facilities across the country which calls for private partnership, as government and various stakeholders in the health sector are determined to achieve MDG4 and 5 by 2015.

In this regard, Ghana’s leading telecommunications company, MTN has donated an infant incubator to the Savelugu             municipal hospital in the Savelugu municipality today.

The donation is, therefore, aimed at providing incubators and ventilators to selected public hospitals which have a need for the facility to improve the survival rate of premature babies.

Abdualah H. Yahaya, Portfolio Advisor for MTN Ghana Foundation, explained that, the statistic available for infant mortality was alarming and requires public private partnership to help improve the situation.

He said donating the essential equipment will relieve the anxiety of the health professionals and parents who have to care for pre-term babies.

Theresa Lardi Bezuo, a Senior Nurse in charge of the Maternal Ward of the hospital receiving the equipment commended MTN Ghana Foundation for the kind gesture saying that the equipment will go a long way to improve quality health care delivery in the hospital.

She added that the equipment will also save more infant lives in the hospital.

 Meanwhile, the maternal ward of the Savelugu municipal hospital is being operated by only five midwives making them overstress on duty.

The situation Madam Theresa Lardi said might hinder quality health care delivery. She therefore called for urgent steps to normalize the situation.                   

Zoom Police Busted For Extorting 300 cedis From An Expatriate

Suspect Salifu Abdul-Rahim (Zoom Police)

A 23 year old Community Protection Police Assistant, Salifu Abdul-Rahim has been busted by the criminal investigation department of the Ghana Police Service for extorting money from a Portuguese expatriate, Daniel Da Silver Duarte.

The suspect apprehended Mr. Duarte for violating traffic regulations, and demanded three hundred Ghana cedis from him. When Mr. Duarte told Salifu that he had no money on him, the suspect insisted and followed him to his hotel for the money.

After giving the money to the suspect, Mr. Duarte who is an employee of GRIDCo proceeded to report the case at the police station.

The issue of extorting money from motorists in Tamale by the Community Protection Police Assistants has become a worry to a lot of residents.

As part of measures to restore the integrity of the Unit, the Northern Regional Commander of the Police MTTU Superintendent Cashman Blewushie has indefinitely suspended all Community Protection Police Assistants from operations in the Tamale Metropolis.

He decried the disgraced the Community Protection Police Assistant popularly known as “Zoom Police” has caused him and his Unit in the Northern Region since its creation by the then National Youth Employment Programme.

GOtv rolls out transmission in Northern region

The people in the northern region now have the privilege to break the monopoly of watching television as a new digital terrestrial television (DTT) service, GOtv has rolled out its services in the Northern regional capital Tamale.

The service was launched at a brief function held in Tamale at the weekend.

The Managing Director of Gotv, Cecil Sunkwa-Mills said having met all regulatory and licensing requirements, GOtv is the first operator in Ghana to launch a DVB-T2 digital pay TV service.

He said Tamale represents one of the most advanced DTT broadcast systems and infrastructure established, not only in Ghana, or Africa, but in the rest of the world to date.

This he said puts Ghana at the forefront of technology in the DTT space. The installation in the northern region valued 2 million US dollars. After a successful launch in Accra and Kumasi earlier this year, the manager said they hope to cover almost half of the entire country by the end of the year.

Mr. Cecil said GOtv uses the DVB-T2 technology, which is the most advanced digital terrestrial television technology worldwide.

He added that GOtv Ghana Limited, a proudly Ghanaian company, has a rich history in the Ghana terrestrial market.

Speaking at the ceremony, Northern Regional Minister, Bede Ziedeng commended management of GOtv for given the people of region a variety of platforms to choose in digital terrestrial television service.

He also advised them to strengthen the security situation around the transmission point.

GOtv, having proven itself in Accra and Kumasi offers exciting pay television packages which deliver great value and give television lovers access to sport, news, children’s programming, documentaries, series and movies, opening up a world of new and exciting family entertainment at a price everyone can afford.

GOtv delivers digital television for everyone and will enable indigenes of the Tamale to experience the digital television revolution in their own home.        

Parents blamed for acts of immorality in Nanumba districts

A class 14 pupil of the Our lady of Peace Primary School in the Nanumba South District, Mohammed Shakira has expressed concern over the high rate of teenage pregnancy in the area and attribute the cause to parents refusal to reprimand their wards when they go wrong.

She said children who go out in the night and return late are not punished by their parents, and this encourages them to engage in such acts to the detriment of their education.  

Ms Shakira told Fiila News in an interview that, even when citizen vigilantes in the area want to take matters of such nature up, recalcitrant parents come to the defense of their wards.

Shakira was speaking in an exclusive interview with Fiila News over the weekend at the closing ceremony of the Annual Regional Girls Camp organized by ActionAid and its partners aimed at empowering young girls to achieve greater heights in education.

The one-week camp, on the theme: “Empowering Girls Through Education: Securing National development”, brought together over 120 girls from basic schools within three districts in the Northern region.

ActionAid is an international Non Governmental Organization which operates in Ghana and other countries in the Africa Sub-region. ActionAid-Ghana uses a rights based approach that is working within the human rights framework to development to help build peoples power to hold duty bearers to account, protect the rights of the poor and vulnerable with the hope of eradicating poverty.

ActionAid Ghana also invests heavily in education with emphasis on securing girls' and women's right to education, access for excluded groups, adequate resources for education, and works to ensure participation, transparency and accountability in the education sector.

Even though, issues of teenage pregnancies has been reduced drastically in the area due to several interventions put in place by ActionAid and its partners, Shakira said base on the sensitization she has gone through during the one-week stay in the camp, she will continue to advise her colleagues to refrain from acts that have the tendencies of jeopardizing their education. 

Participants who were selected by their respective schools at the regional level through their girl-child officers, were educated on their right to education, interpersonal relationship, how to build self esteem, and protect themselves against domestic violence.

The Nanumba Districts are noted for their high rate of violence against females ranging from defilement, forced marriage, betrothal and rape among others with perpetrators often left to walk away free after the act.

Meanwhile, the project coordinator of “Stop Violence Against Girls”, Yakubu Suale indicated that the issue of teenage pregnancies have been reduce in the over 28 project communities of actionaid and its partners.

He stated that such issues were prevalent but due to the intervention of actionaid and its partners such issues have since been nib to the bud.